Congratulations, RP Gladiators!

A hearty congratulations to Silver Hand's first (and only) 2v2 Gladiators, dear friends of mine, and well deserving of the title, Kadrix and Sren of Slaves Shall Serve. 2,318 is a remarkable accomplishment in BG9's 2v2 bracket, made even more astonishing by their steadfast refusal to give in to the bandwagon matrices dominating high-end arena. Paladin/Rogue is by no means an easy matrix to climb with, and hard counters confronted them around every corner.

We had the pleasure of facing Slaves Shall Serve (now known as Sren's Team) twice on the day they made that final climb into gladiator range, contributing 14 and 16 points to their cause (quite unwillingly, I might add). With my 2v2's 2,297 not holding up under the inflation of 2v2 in BG9, we were forced to make a last minute push to try for 2,310+ with mixed results. We managed to get as close as 2,305 before running into Priest/Rogue teams running full shadow resist, and other hard counters, eventually tanking the rating to the nether reaches of duelist range. After insurmountable frustrations (and 9 minute queues) took their toll on Eternia and myself, we eventually abandoned our hopes of Gladiator 2v2's, and formed up for 3v3 in a last ditch attempt at Gladiator.

Rocking a lovely 2,269 3v3 rating and Gladiator range a good 70+ points away at 2,330, our hopes for season 2 Gladiator titles were fading fast. A string of nice wins pushed us to 2,280, but we'd been as high as 2,308 before and knew that a natural cap is a tough thing to overcome.

With Gladiator status still a couple wins away, we zoned into Nagrand Arena across some familiar (and frankly, terrifying) names: Ohnoes the mage, Azazael the warlock, and a druid we could only assume was Secretive. After a brief series of colorful and inventive streams of obscenities, I set to work the only way I know how: Pop my trinket and DoT up everything in sight. Racking up a full set of Azazael DoTs, I could feel the pain train coming, but my salvation came in an unfamiliar form. With full dots ticking on me, and (I assume) Ohnoes burst on the way, I found myself Cycloned and Secretive standing in the middle of the fray. With my job of exposing their druid done for me, Eternia quickly jumped on the druid icon after the second cyclone in the chain was down, and I had just enough juice left in Icon of the Silver Crescent to get full DoTs up on Secretive as he decided it was time to get out of town.

A head's up play by our druid, Azchire, locked down the Mage from polymorphing Eternia, and saved some valuable seconds by not having to wait for a felhunter dispell. Pillar-humping couldn't save the Tich druid, as a well timed mace stun and our usual 2v2 druid combo skill-coil/spell lock happy fun times downed him between Spam Sit's pillars.

A quick /salute to Ohnoes and mop-up duty a gleeful chore, with mixed feelings I added the warlock formerly known as Azael to my list of fallen Tich Icons. A great season for beating personal heroes and icons of Arena was more than complete without a Gladiator title, but the win put us on the precipice of Gladiator range. After downing a Rogue/Mage/Priest with our now-solid strat of Priest detonation, we faced off with our titles on the line against a Warrior/Paladin/ Hpriest team we had beaten earlier that night. Double-healer is always a test of gamesmanship, with strats over-riding Random Number Generators and lucky stuns/resists.

Luckily, the team opted not to don whatever Shadow Resist gear they may have had. We ended up playing Man-to-Man, with myself keeping the priest in combat all match (and Mana Draining when opportune), I abused the high mana cost of priest Dispells to run him quite out of mana early and often. Eternia and Azchire alternated CC and DPSing the Warrior and Paladin targets: CCing one til DR was up, then DPSing him while CC ran its course on the other. We had a couple opportunities to execute the Priest, but the Paladin bubble was up every time, and BoP + Bubble managed to keep the Priest alive until the next cycle demanded pressure. Eventually, these soft burns on the Paladin finished off his mana pool, and no amount of bubbling could keep his Priest alive.

I got to enjoy the satisfation of Death Coil executing the Priest a good 7-8 minutes into the fight to give us the 3v2 advantage, but by that time, the match was long decided. With howls of victory over Vent, congratulations of Gladiator status were owed all around. The Silver Hand 3v3 known affectionately as SHOOP DA WHOOP secured their 2,346 3v3 rating, and immortality alongside the other elite of the BG9 arena scene.

Not bad for an RP server.